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Thursday, November 05, 2015

London primary school tells children to clasp their hands behind their backs when walking

Somewhere at the back of Nicky Morgan's pledge of "robust and rigorous" for seven-year-olds lies a feeling that children have had it too soft for too long.

The country is in a mess and who know who is to blame. Our children.

Certainly a new authoritarianism seems to be creeping into education.

In April the papers were full of the goings on at a school in Huddersfield affecting much older pupils.

Furious parents have accused a school of overkill after hundreds of children were given detention for forgetting items like rubbers and pencil sharpeners ...

The school texted parents during the Easter break saying that children would receive a detention if they failed to bring a planner diary, a pen, a pencil, a sharpener, a rubber, a ruler and a calculator.

But there is no policy so repressive that a member of the teaching profession cannot be found to defend it enthusiastically:

"During the last term we experienced a huge increase in the number of students routinely arriving at school without the basic items of equipment we expect them to have each day.

"It is extremely disruptive to learning when large volumes of students need to borrow equipment from their teacher or our Student Services bureau ...

"It can be difficult for parents to appreciate how much this particular problem can get in the way of teaching in such a large school. We expect the prospect of a detention to act as an incentive to students to take responsibility for bringing all their equipment in future."

Note that this policy goes hand in hand with the modern trend for calling pupils "students".